Buenos Aires

Day 5 in Buenos Aires and we are starting to get the hangs of things over here. The first 3 nights we stayed in the city centre and wandered around checking out the architecture, Recoleta cemetary (where Argentian aristocrats and Evita is buried) and other key sights (will post photos of places later, but can´t download straight from camera to blog or flikr - or can i? If anyone knows, please email me. For now, i will be posting pics in bulk every couple of weeks). So for now, you just get some idle ramble and thoughts about BA from me.

And what better way to start than beer. The local beer is called Quilmes and its good. You can buy it for 4 pesos from the Supermercado (my new favourite word, but even better is the `Disco Supermercado´ which is like a chain of supermarkets over here). To clarify folks, thats about $2 aussie dollars for 650ml. Needless to say, Jeb is happy about that! Another cheap success story has been steak. Massive cuts of meat and its available everywhere. Without understanding a word of the menu on our 2nd night, we were served this fantastic steak and salad meal which costs about $10 each. Bueno! But not all things are so cheap, for example, accomodation is probably double what it said in the guidebook. This is not helped by the global financial crisis and the fall of the aussie dollar. Lots of things are in US dollars for comparison purposes, so we are paying a bit more than expected but all good and this is probably going to be the most expensive city on our travels anyway.

Yesterday we took the subway to an area called Palermo which is a leafy neighbourhood on the city fringe filled with huge parks, and lots of resturants, bars and cafes. A shop sign described it perfectly - bougeouis bohemian. The area is trendy with a fantastic weekend market where i wanted to buy everything i saw. It reminds me of a cross between Surry Hills, Paddington and some northern city suburb. On the other end of Palermo are grand, ornate consulate buildings and wealthy residences where ladies walk their designer dogs but with less pretensiousness than other cities.

My Spanish is improving every day, or at least i am getting more confident. I am also now tutoring Jeb with 2 new words or phrases a day, and he is an a great student. After some very confusing language experiences (especially on the bus...argghh!!), we are practising with each other and looking at the phrasebook frequently so will continue to improve.

Last night it stormed and rained heavily and being a Sunday today, most things are closed (perhaps as it´s the Sabbath in this Catholic dominant country). Feeling vegie deficient already in this land of meat, potato and cheese, we cooked a vegie stirfry last night despite struggling to find any kind of asian sauce or soy to cook it with. Tonight we are back to steak before leaving tommorrow to get the ferry to Uruguay and spend a couple of days there. Hopefully the rain will pass and we will come back to BA for tango, antique markets and a La Boca futball (soccer) game next weekend.